Electron Amplify AppSync “Realtime disabled when in a server-side environment”

I’m using amplify appsync in my electron app and all works except for the realtime events which means my app doesn’t get signalled when the data changes in the cloud.

I know this is because it’s running in Node which is what amplify is looking for (JS.browserOrNode) however I don’t know how to fix it. Can someone advise me how I can get the realtime updates? When I query it just gets the local data unless I Datastore.stop() and Datastore.start() but surely there’s a better way?

Thank you in advance!

Answer

Thanks to the amplify team on discord for this one, in amplify-js the logic for the browser vs node check is:

const browserOrNode = () => {
    const isBrowser =
        typeof window !== 'undefined' && typeof window.document !== 'undefined';
    const isNode =
        typeof process !== 'undefined' &&
        process.versions != null &&
        process.versions.node != null;

    return {
        isBrowser,
        isNode,
    };
};

The Datastore logic determines whether it’s going to spit that warning or start the subscriptions:

if (isNode) {
    logger.warn(
        'Realtime disabled when in a server-side environment'
    );
} else {
    //#region GraphQL Subscriptions
    [
        // const ctlObservable: Observable<CONTROL_MSG>
        ctlSubsObservable,
        // const dataObservable: Observable<[TransformerMutationType, SchemaModel, Readonly<{
        // id: string;
        // } & Record<string, any>>]>
        dataSubsObservable,
    ] = this.subscriptionsProcessor.start();
}

But because Electron runs the app in a Node.js environment it’s why DataStore is disabling realtime.

You can stop this by forcing isNode to be false and then realtime works with electron 🙂